App Deals This Week

Good evening, folks. It’s Thursday, the 13th of December, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey‘s release is just one day away. (Unless you have the luxury of a 10 p.m. or midnight showing near you.) I’ve been listening to the soundtrack, and in fact it’s been with me during the composition of this entire deals article. So, if you see some old-English, remember why it’s there. Now, on to the deals of post boxes, healing things with a snap, and so many languages, evening an translator can’t help you. Don’t worry though, Elvish is not among them. Let’s be off!

Mathematics is an important subject in all schools, but it’s not always easy to learn. Take square roots and logarithms: they can be very troubling to the mind. But there’s a way around long calculations. This one aids you in multiplying large numbers in your head without even thinking about some scratch paper to jot notes on. It’s the beginning of Mathemagics, Blue Lightning Labs’ solution to faster calculations without the need of an electronic beside you. There are also mobile apps available to exercise your mind, if this one at just 99 cents isn’t good enough. Have fun learning some new tricks each day.

When you’re writing something lengthy, whether it’s a research paper or report for work, it should be organized. The best way of doing this is outlining. While there are easy ways to make outlines in apps like TextEdit and Pages, it’s better to have something that’s dedicated to the task, like Peppered Software’s Scribe. The nice-looking distraction-free app is everything you can ask for in a simple outliner. With keyboard shortcuts, OMPL support, fullscreen mode, versions, that minimal interface, and dark and light themes, this app excels where others don’t try to. Markdown support would be nice, but maybe the developer will add it in the future. For now, it’s $3 off, so grab it for just $9.99.

Make unarchiving something a snap of your fingers with this app. Whether it’s a ZIP, RAR, or StuffIt file, finding out what’s inside is only a drag and drop away. You can also compress files into various formats with the same procedure. The user interface and functionality are all self-expanitory and take but a moment of your time, or at the moment, $10.99 of your money. If The Unarchiver, a free app, isn’t what you’re looking for, consider this instead.

Email on Mac is easy with Apple’s included Mail.app. However, some people don’t like it, so they download an alternative, like Sparrow. Since that was recently acquired by Google and is no longer being actively developed, good old Postbox looks like a nice alternative. It has all the labels for Gmail, includes a calendar, looks beautiful, and keeps things clean and minimal in the design department. And of all things, it’s only $6.95 for the holiday sale.